The Labour party right now:
Senior Lecturer in Art History, University of Essex. Trustee, Bishopsgate Institute. Law Student. Historian of tattooing. Podcaster @beneaththeskinpod.history.tattoo. 'Painted People' and 'Tattoos' out now. ADHD.
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The Labour party right now:
I guess there is a greater than 0% chance that yvette cooper or shabana mahmood will come out and condemn his arrest.
I am very unlikely to vote Green except as an āanyone but reformā vote, as I donāt gel with them on a lot of stuff, but would gently urge any lefty allies to rally around the left party with a pro-trans leader rather than hoping to get the worldās most stubborn man to change his mind
Glinner arrested at Heathrow, lxds
Not only has Glinner been arrested, heās not allowed to post on Twitter/X as part of his bail conditions š
Tell me!
Days of news cycle on this clown archipelago nothing but
Are you young, highly educated and driven, and want to contribute to our stagnant economy with its aging population and low productivity? Well out you go
I can't think of a better term for it than suicide politics. It's not just the humiliation of its own voters, it's the gifting of awareness and credibility to its enemy for free. How much easier could they make it? And what's the next nail in its own coffin move? A snap election right now?
Gibbo vibes today are going craaaazy
None of this is necessarily confined to the elites. A lot of the types of people who were loudly declaring they couldnāt support Labour in 2019 because of the moral stain of bigotry on the party are the same ones now telling you itās this or Reform. They are telling on themselves. Itās that simple.
I am amused that Mamdani is seen as a raving communist for suggesting mid-tier FDR type reforms and there's an actual Eugene Debs dude running for Senate in Maine and he's not freaking out anybodyyyy oh yes. Shit. He's white. Sorry, I just got it. Go about your business.
The dirty little secret that has cropped up unavoidably with increasing frequency since 9/11 but has become harder and harder to conceal as time passes is that the western liberalism fucking hates Muslims and believes itās in an existential war with Islam as much as any āfringeā far-right lunatic.
Itās hard to look aroundāat Blair pitching a luxury resort to be built on the Gaza killing fields or Keir Starmer responding to anti-Asian hate by affirming his affinity for the perpetratorsāand not conclude that the eliteās real problem with Corbyn was that he wasnāt sufficiently Islamophobic.
I think George Osborne openly musing to the air that the security services probably wouldnāt have tolerated Labour winning in 2017, because of our relationship with America, is quite helpful and Iād like to hear more.
Big deal! I can detect heart failure far faster than AI, as long as there is no particular requirement for being right.
the virgin common sense rationalist: erm, everyone knows that the universe is a cold and uncaring structure of blind chaos the chad aperture of the universe witnessing itself: wow, i live here? splendid
The same way that older reactionaries all get each other whipped up and scared about Urban Crime is what professional liberals who got blog psychosis in 2010 do about Websites
Holy shit I forgot all about this from when Trump got covid
Extraordinary to be able to say this out loud
It does not seem good that a sizable portion of the political and media elite would rather cook their brains on a white nationalist website than have to engage with criticism from the left.
Results so stunningly clear they inspired this classic xkcd (xkcd.com/2400/):
Prageroo
Joseph Beuys, Joseph Beuys. Multiples, 1972 #artbots #tate https://botfrens.com/collections/14375/contents/1078899
The Left must always be more like The Right and The Right can continue to do whatever it wants. - mainstream political pundits for as long as Iāve been alive
looked into the 'artists' 'gallery' in miami and lol
I just think it's worth reiterating that this content free, vibes-based, know-nothing grievance based approach to election analysis was the thing Nate opposed in creating 538! Like, he has literally become the thing he started his career to oppose. It's amazing.
Oh my god what is she DOING?
It's remarkable how ~2017-2019 was an all-hands existential struggle to eradicate the unacceptable scourge of bigotry and racism from British politics forever, and now it's this, all day, every day, and not a single one of our commentariat has noticed nor has anything to say about it.
Fear of crime: an unholy alliance between politicians that need a cudgel, local news that needs clicks, social media's ability to share viral anecdotal crime stories, police that need justification to exist, and the fact that police/surveillance tech is a multi-billion dollar industry, and racism.
are we SURE sure this isnāt AI
my working theory of "there absolutely is some kind of Death of Stalin style escapade on the go" has not yet been disproven
Is that a ācow tools rackā in the Star Wars set??? @cowtoolsdaily.bsky.social
I'm sorry but this is insane www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...
"chatGPT 5 is like having a bunch of phds in your pocket" here's ten trillion dollars "bluesky is having an *actual* bunch of phds in your pocket" dying platform. it disgusts me
It is astonishing how badly suited Keir Starmer is to the current moment. Just astonishing
Starmer has appointed a former trustee of Sex Matters as Number 20's director of communications. Every day this Labour Government declares itself my enemy and the ally of international authoritarianism.
āI donāt want asylum seekers to live on my streetā is genuinely a wild thing to say as a notionally progressive politician
This is such a weird lie. He so obviously doesn't.
The thing is when people say "biologically male/female" in contexts like this, they don't really mean in the sense of observable, empirical biological features (b/c that would inevitably produce some results they don't want), they mean what you "should" be, what you're divinely "designed" to be.
Like. What the fuck?
This was just one of the many insane events covered by @maddow.msnbc.com yesterday that somehow I'd missed in the noise.
Did everyone else miss the news that Trump's director of personnel failed a background check, was using a false name, was born in the Soviet Union despite claiming to be from Malta, and has now been made Ambassador to India? nypost.com/2025/06/17/u...
Itās helpful that politicians do podcasts now because it means we get stuff like, say, former Chancellor George Osborne asking the air whether the security services wouldāve tolerated Labour winning the 2017 election and quite obviously implying that the answer is āLOL no they absolutely would notā.
The āBritish personā in this instance was me; I do find it deeply amusing that, as well as being extremely racist about British Indians and their role in British food culture, this America has managed to name the curry that was most famously created in Britain
If correctly written: "Ministers are to announce a tightening of migration rules as the government hands over the political agenda to Nigel Farage" Both immoral and politically inept. Well done Yvette Cooper.
Let's be blunt. Corbyn and Sultana had the chance to form a left wing party that was inclusive in its very foundations. Instead they've given a prominent, vocal position to a transphobe who is anti-abortion. That's the foundation of their project, now.
šØBREAKING: Bread is now woke, according to Alex Phillips
In E Staub's psychological research into the Holocaust he constructs three major psychological profiles, perpetrators, bystanders, and helpers. The former are characterised by their aggression, but also, often, their own self conceptualisation as victims and their victims as the aggressors.
Man, it's getting really hard to find the current British fash intimidating...
"83.3% of LLM users were unable to quote even one sentence from the essay they had just written"
A lot of historians getting cranky about this but personally I'd welcome scientists unilaterally solving a few more historiographical mysteries and freeing our time up for email etc.
Not even a "Bonus Word". Fuck you, Squaredle.
This is a hate crime.
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'At least two universities have revised academic job adverts after pressure from free speech campaigners, marking one of the first tangible effects of new legislation in England.' 1/2
regardless of what happens to the tariffs, they're doomed from the start because the average conservative holds all three of these positions at once: ā virtue signals about supporting US manufacturing ā against increasing the minimum wage ā buys foreign imports because they're cheap
there's a very simple reason why conservative influencers source their blanks from abroad: pursuance of self-interest and profit maximization are considered virtues in their worldview. supporting US manufacturing would be like supporting welfare.
News for anyone wanting to cop the awesome trans-flag Inter Miami shirt or some obscure Spanish third division banger! CFS have 20% everything until Monday. Also a great way to get cheap sportswear for exercising - I climb in an old Iceland away kit www.classicfootballshirts.co.uk/2025-26-inte...
goes without saying but the actual videos are the least sexy thing I've ever seen. He is gooning to the Polar Express x.com/KShiverz/sta...
They have been doing this for a long time. You can only be a proper judge, politician, lecturer, expert, journalist, whatever if you are very right-wing. If that's not the case, you are just a left-wing activist.
This is fucking, what??! What are they doingā¦dear god
ā¦what in the actual?!
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As I wrote about in my book Ask A Historian, thereās no such thing as an accurate historical drama. Itās basically impossible. But obviously some dramas work harder to be faithful to sources, and others donāt. There are many reasons why the latter situation is more commonly seen
www.bishopsgate.org.uk/stories/the-...
Oh FFS.
I got an NYT push alert about Taylor Swift getting engaged, but not about the United States spying on Greenland
Letās start with the fact that dude is doing Digital Blackface and calling it his āsidekickā
As it's still valid, presumably if I don't keep following it, I am also breaking the law and subject to arrest. The law of the land simultaneously requires me to be both a man and a woman and if I do either then I am breaking the law and subject to arrest. (11/13)
And that the legal obligation I have to live as female for the rest of my life, which I signed and gave up my marriage for, is still in effect but also if I keep following it, I am breaking the law and subject to arrest. (10/13)
Robot who drinks all the earth's water while goading you into killing yourself can also call the cops on you!
Ok, so ADHD is a stupid name. We don't have an attention deficit and describing people who can doom scroll on the sofa in task paralysis for 10 hours as "hyperactive" is taking the piss. It also described how we inconvenience other people, rather than what it does to us. I have a better idea (1/2)
fantasies of history which appeal as affirmation, commodity or whatever else. There's no one here that capitalism and AI isn't dehumanising. And that's before you even look at the erasure of actual Holocaust victims who become little more than useful prompts. Same with the nationalist AI slop.
Translations of my books out soon: 'Tattoos' in German, and 'Painted People' in Polish!
Man there are certain things you just can't unlearn and one of them is that the "natural party of government" of Japan, a country of 100+ million people, was founded with a briefcase full of CIA cash handed to a war criminal. Oh yeah, we really give a shit about "democracy." Always have.
I genuinely used to think they must have access to some information I don't that convinces them this is a good idea for reasons I cannot tell. I no longer do. I think the best explanation of Labour's behaviour is genuinely something like cowardice and insecurity, a cringing suspicion that somehow...
With Labour, I genuinely believe the answer is that it's a bunch of uni graduates trying to imagine themselves into a stereotyped "left behind white working class mindset" and deciding "those people don't like universities", when what they really mean is "I am afraid they don't like us".
I genuinely think a lot of people in British academia just kind assumed it was appreciated by the government that obviously we're a sector the UK has a comparative advantage in and so worth protecting just from a national interest pov. I still don't really get why that turned out to be false.
It's also in The Independent, as part of a larger piece about how the Democratic Party's intransigence on Israel in 2024 and sudden (and still reluctant) change of heartāor, more realistically, tuneāon Israel in recent months is 'now' proving to be massively damaging to the party.
These are just ordinary brits, with their life-sized cardboard cutouts of politicians that we all have, and their Freikorps that they've founded. It could be any one of us.
I just donāt think itās unreasonable to say the public should be worried when a former senior Labour MP, who famously helped General Augusto Pinochet evade facing trial for crimes against humanity including torture, argues that Britain should ādecoupleā from the European Convention on Human Rights.
Hey it's a "Defeat fascism in the marketplace of ideas" post but actually in the paper!
This, from the Quakers, is a pretty good example of how to resist pressure from bigot lobbying groups. Effectively āwe legally can allow trans people to use the loo, we morally should, and we tried it and nothing bad happenedā
oh jeez
I'm not sure how many of my fellow historians are poker players, but that's a game that's tailor-made for us. Sitting at a table for long hours, drawing out one disappointment after another and then finally getting a holy shit holy shit this is amazing and then another three hours of boredom ...
I think I've been known to cheer presences, and audibly curse absences too. I'm sure librarians love me but fellow patrons probably disagree.
I allow myself the occasional guffaw or squeak of delight as the occasion demands. I have a big archive visit in a week or so with what I'm hoping will be *lots* of noise-inducing material.
No film gets historians right, but that's only because no audience wants to watch someone quietly work their way through a cardboard box of old papers, in total silence, for eight straight hours.
Today I learned a Mexican invented color television. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guiller...
Just checking is Tesla still worth more than all the rest of the car companies combined?
there's something i find spiritually unnerving about watching this, no hyperbole adam friedland isn't even attacking ritchie torres in this clip. istg it's like he's trying to *defend* torres from the implications of torres's own vile words but torres is affronted by the idea that he's at all human
This shot is brilliant and should be shown in any film study class #GameofThrones
And the final line "I don't think you know what you're talking about".
āCan you be a human being about this?ā No, Ritchie Torres cannot.
Everyone should watch the last 30 minutes of this interview. youtu.be/q0Eeht171HQ?...
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